05 March 2012 6:28 PM

Andrew Lansley has started talking to himself

I cannot decide if it is commendable or lamentable for a Secretary of State for Health to show no discernible instinct for self-survival. But that’s certainly the position Andrew Lansley appears to have got himself into.

He has already expended vast amounts of his – and the government’s – political capital on ploughing ahead with a health reform bill which virtually nobody understands. No doubt seeking to free up the commissioning processes in the NHS and place them in the hands of professionals might just lead to some efficiency gains. But the reasoning behind the reforms and what they might mean in practice have been so badly explained – and so vociferously opposed by those who believe the NHS is something close to perfection – that the public are deeply mistrustful of anything the coalition now do in this area.

Unfazed by the fallout from his planned health service reforms, Lansley is about to launch himself headlong into another unnecessary and controversial political battle. In the next few days, he’s likely to announce a public consultation on whether plain packaging should be introduced for all tobacco products.

With the economy failing to grow at any meaningful rate, a meltdown in the eurozone and obstinately high unemployment figures, it is little wonder that the removal of gold leaf from cigarette packets is not shown by the opinion polls as one of the public’s top priorities. The electorate may well conclude that he has taken leave of his senses.

In fact, if talking to yourself is indeed an early sign of madness, then the Department of Health is indeed veering away from sanity on Andrew Lansley’s watch. In various parts of the country, taxpayer-funded billboard posters have sprung up, urging passing motorists to support the Plain Packs Protect campaign. You’d expect public money to be used only to actually hold the public consultation and to analyse and audit the responses, not to run a high-profile PR campaign pressing for a particular outcome. The Department of Health is using taxpayers’ cash to talk to itself and indeed to lobby itself. This isn’t just absurd, it is unconscionable.

The posters themselves urge people to “support plain packaging and protect our children”. The implication is that there is good evidence to suggest that the removal of branding from cigarette packs will reduce the number of youngsters taking up smoking. This simply isn’t true. No such evidence exists.

In the heat of an election campaign, you might just allow political parties to make grandiose and rather dubious claims. But for a government funded poster campaign to do so – in advance of a public consultation – is wholly unacceptable. Unsurprisingly, Smokefree South West, the producers of the poster, have now been referred to the Advertising Standards Agency.

Last year, when announcing a new initiative to cut back on unnecessary red tape and nannying, David Cameron couldn’t have been clearer, “We need to tackle regulation with vigour, both to free businesses to compete and create jobs, and give people greater freedom and personal responsibility,” he said.

Andrew Lansley obviously wasn’t listening. The Health Secretary seems to be falling into the politician’s trap of always wanting to “do something”.

If he’s foolish enough to press ahead with legislation on plain packaging, he will face stiff opposition (and ridicule) from the well-organised Hands Off Our Packs campaign, will be directly undermining the government’s professed desire to oppose more regulatory intervention and will be embracing an expensive strategy with no remotely provable public health benefits. The Australians have become the only country in the world to legislate for plain packs and now face an expensive legal fight with companies who have had their intellectual property nationalised.

The Prime Minister has been remarkably loyal to his Health Secretary to date. But he will surely conclude that a period of silence on Andrew Lansley’s part would now be most welcome.

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MARK LITTLEWOOD

Mark Littlewood is Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

He went onto study at City University Law School. Since 1995, Mark has worked in political communications, public relations and public affairs – variously for the European Movement, the Environment Agency and the London Bus Initiative.

In 2001, he became Campaigns Director for the human rights group Liberty, leaving in 2004 to found NO2ID, the group which opposes identity cards and the database state, and became its first national co-ordinator.

From December 2004 to May 2007, Mark was Head of Media for the Liberal Democrats. In 2007, Mark co-founded Progressive Vision, a classical liberal think tank and was its Communications Director until November 2009.